March 12, 2026
New era of fraud network intelligence: Early results from Plaid Protect
What is Plaid Protect?
Plaid Protect is our next-gen fraud intelligence platform that’s powered by insights from 1B+ device connections across 7,000+ apps to give you visibility beyond your four walls. It delivers a real-time Trust Index score based a diverse set of fraud insights:
Network-level relationship mapping
Device intelligence
Bank account history
Real-time behavioral signals
Impact to date
Since launch, we’ve helped dozens of companies improve their fraud tech stack. Protect is now out of beta and we’re excited to share the impact to date.
Early adopters participated in retro-analyses, where Plaid analyzed historical data to determine how much fraud Protect would have detected. The results?
Plaid Protect could have improved fraud detection by 40-59% while stepping up 5-10% of users. Customers appreciated the fact that they can optimize customer experiences through different types of step up authentication.
In particular, there were a number of instances where customers were impressed with Protect’s ability to detect the tougher fraud types and reduce overall losses. On average, Plaid Protect could have:
Detected 46% more first party fraud
Prevented 52% of fraud dollar losses
Protect provides orthogonal signals that provide meaningful uplift for detection – even if you already have existing fraud defenses and tools in place.
Why traditional fraud tools miss the full picture
The fraud prevention industry is overdue for a new and differentiated data source because fraud is evolving and accelerating faster than ever. Today, most fraud systems rely on things like static identity checks or rules built only on internal data.
But fraud rings don’t operate inside a single app. They reuse devices, rotate accounts, cycle IP addresses, create synthetic identities at scale, launch repetitive account takeover attacks, and coordinate activity across platforms.
When you only see what’s happening in your own environment, you’re not getting a holistic view of fraud risk. Protect brings broader context to help you make an informed decision. Our network maps the historical relationship between users, devices, and bank accounts, providing dynamic fraud risk signals that update as behavior changes.
Join our tech talk on March 17th to learn about the impact customers have seen.
What makes Protect different
Protect helps teams better assess risk across high value fraud types, including:
Synthetic identity fraud
Account takeover (ATO)
First-party fraud
Coordinated fraud rings
And more
Here’s how we do that:
1. Network-level visibility
Many tools analyze behavior within a single customer’s system. Plaid Protect analyzes the relationships across 500 million bank accounts, users, and devices. This empowers Protect customers to:
Spot coordinated fraud rings
Detect long-tail device reuse
Identify synthetic identity clusters
See patterns that don’t show up in one dataset alone
Fraudsters can fake names and addresses, but behavioral patterns across a network are harder to hide behind.
2. Early signals, applied with precision
Protect can assess risk at signup, login, password reset, money movement, and during ongoing activity. Plaid analyzes a multitude of fraud risk signals as soon as a device enters your flow. Instead of applying friction broadly, you can target it where it matters. You don’t need to trade off revenue versus a smooth user experience. You can achieve both by:
Fast-tracking lower risk users
Applying step-ups only where fraud risk is higher
Reassessing risk throughout the user journey
3. From investigation to action—without heavy lift
With Protect, you can reduce the time between identifying a pattern and responding to it. All within one user interface, you have access to:
Overview: Search for event conditions and get a snapshot view of all activity from the day.
Explore: See all events scored by the Trust Index through an interactive bar chart – complete with filters by various fraud attributes. Use natural language search to not only spot fraud patterns, but turn it into a rule in production. This significantly speeds up response times to different fraud threats.
Configure: Tailor workflows based on various conditions across data source verification, document verification, risk engine results, and more.
Rule Groups: Create rules groups to detect fraud and enforce policies.
Get started
Protect is versatile enough to fit a broad range of fraud prevention tech stacks. Protect can complement your existing fraud stack; customers can layer it alongside other tools to strengthen detection performance.
If you already use Plaid, activation is lightweight. For new customers, Protect supports SDK and API integrations.
No matter how threats continue to evolve, fraud is always connected to the financial system. People commit fraud to steal money or clean money, so the best way to identify and fight it is by analyzing cross-network behavioral patterns. Plaid Protect makes it possible for any company to do so.
To learn more about Protect or request access, reach out to your account manager. If you’re not yet a Plaid customer, contact fraud-and-risk@plaid.com.